The Romsey Show

the Romsey Show 2011

Who said that the best place to learn is a classroom?
Hands-on learning should be taking place all over all the time.  When you think about it, almost any activity can be educational, especially with primary school aged children.

We recently had a great time going to the Romsey Show as a family.  My daughters LOVED it, and they learned a lot too.  Farmers were there with all kinds of livestock, and there were also workers from a bat hospital, otter sanctuary, falconry group, and other animal-related groups.  We were able to get really close to the animals, and my girls had a chance to talk to some of the workers about them (in addition to asking us questions).  They learned a lot about animals, agriculture, the local food industry, and the environment (especially environmental issues that impact local wildlife).  If we had just told them the information at home, they'd probably have promptly lost interest.  Since we actually saw the animals, they'll be talking about this day out and the things they learned for months.

To find out more about our visit to the Romsey Show, click here.

Butterflies!

We recently had the chance to take our five-year-old to the Natural History Museum in London.  We actually had to queue up outside to even get into the museum!  There were lots of families there, and it was nice to see that a museum was such a popular attraction.

Inside there were a lot of good displays, and Miriam ran back and forth in excitement looking at all of the cases.  Her favorite was the whale.  There are several whale skeletons and a life-size model of a blue whale.  I'm pretty sure our house could fit inside of it.  There was also a fantastic new section on dinosaurs.

The highlight of our visit, though, was the butterfly house outside.  The temporary special exhibit, Sensational Butterflies, really was sensational.  There were thousands of butterflies of all varieties, ranging from tiny brown ones to silk moths so large and colorful they looked like kites.  It was absolutely delightful to have so many butterflies flying everywhere around you (and sometimes landing on you).  There was also a great educational trail through the butterfly house.  Every few yards there was a little station that taught kids something about butterflies.  They were very hands-on and included both information and a chance to try things out themselves and observe butterflies.  There were special lenses, for example, that you could look through to see as a butterfly sees.  We all loved it, and I have to admit that I learned things about butterflies that I had never known before.

Butterflies are a great topic to get kids excited about science, and you can encourage butterflies around your home as well with butterfly feeders or butterfly attracting plants.  We have buddleias, for example, that always have butterflies around them in the summer (unfortunately the caterpillars seem to like eating up our gooseberry bush first).